Over two-and-a-half decades, William Jenkins has held multiple leadership posts in the Louisiana State University System, culminating in an eight-year presidency defined by Hurricane Katrina. Now the native South African has returned as interim president, replacing the ousted John Lombardi, amid a fiscal storm and a flood of disparate pressures about the identity and structure of a 54,000-student system that includes multiple academic and research campuses along with the statewide charity hospital system.

View full sizeMichael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune archiveWilliam Jenkins, left, and John Lombardi were photographed in January 2008, during the announcement of the resignation of Sean O'Keefe as LSU chancellor.

The Legislature is debating a budget that will force steep cuts. Construction of a Charity Hospital successor in New Orleans is under way, but the financing isn't settled. Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose appointees control the system governing board, envisions a fundamental remake of the charity model.

Lawmakers moved the University of New Orleans to the University of Louisiana System and could do the same this year with LSU's Shreveport campus.

And a group of wealthy main campus alumni and others have formed the Flagship Coalition with the possible aim of consolidating some LSU units under the main campus and a single chief executive based there.

The Times-Picayune sat down with Jenkins in his office this week to discuss the landscape. Here are highlights:

T-P: Generally speaking, interim executives are either short-term caretakers and or they serve more extended, action-oriented tenures. Where will you come down?

Jenkins: Clearly, I'm not a candidate for the permanent position. This is an interim position for me. On the other hand, this is a very complex matrix at the moment that we're dealing with. ... Interim? Not a doubt. Am I going to be hands-on and heavily involved in management and change? The answer is without doubt, because of the circumstances.

T-P: Most immediate is the selection of an interim chancellor. What is ahead in that regard?

Jenkins: I can't think or even be fair to speculate on names. Nothing good can come from that. ... As I had to point out long ago, with all the speculation already out there, I'm the one who's going to make that call. You can speculate all you want. I'm going to make that decision. ... There's clearly going to have to be an interim chancellor. The difficulty is that we don't have a president yet. There are very few people who would be candidates for a chancellor position at LSU who wouldn't know who their boss is going to be.

T-P: Have you had the chance to get a handle on the budget, both the mandated cuts for the current year ending June 30 and the next fiscal year?

Jenkins: I met with chancellors (Wednesday) and went over spreadsheets and potential cuts. ... I've dealt with cuts before, but when you're dealing with cuts of this magnitude, they are truly catastrophic. ... We're in touch with budget implications on a daily basis. ... We know one thing, it's going to be difficult, wherever it ends.

T-P: There are a lot of layers to the story of John Lombardi's departure. But it seems clear that tension revolved around what people thought about his priorities within the system and how he balanced the component parts. How do you manage the looming cuts without running into the same parochial battles?

Jenkins: That's going to happen. There is strong regionalization and strong parochialism in Louisiana, but that's probably true in most states. ... The prioritization has to be done in conjunction with the campuses, but it would be unfair to pretend this is all new.

T-P: Is this to the degree that you or campus chancellors will be looking at eliminating whole programs.

Jenkins: I think it's inevitable. I don't see another alternative.

T-P: Would you rather cut a wholesale program -- recognizing that you never get it back -- as a means to protect other enterprises or do you spread the pain, at risk of widespread mediocrity?

Jenkins: You used the word: If you spread the pain, you are assuring mediocrity. ... You cannot be fiscally nimble at a university. You can't close a program immediately. You can't stop it after one year. There is a moral and ethical obligation and a legal obligation to fulfill your contract with those students. Even though you might be forced into programmatic closure, you are not going to save all that money overnight.

T-P: Is it fair to say that you cannot approach this kind of budget without your non-tuition charging units and the medical schools taking the brunt, because the state support is a larger percentage of their operations?

Jenkins: The professional schools are all in that same boat. You can't charge tuition to a level that they can't possibly attend. The medical students' debt is $70,000 or higher than that. Can you suddenly double that? You can see the difficulty. .. Then the non-tuition units, that's your future in so many ways. You have to protect those. Ag is a good example. We have ag research that you can't just stop (because of) the economic consequences for the state.

T-P: Can the questions of the system's structure -- issues that the Flagship Coalition is raising -- be settled in the middle of a presidential search?

Jenkins: Nothing wrong with sharing options and possibilities, but decision points have to be when the new president is in place. And, again, it brings in the worse thing that we deal with, and that is speculation. ... A president has to be in place and a board has to be in agreement before that proceeds.

T-P: With powerful, wealthy members, the Flagship Coalition operates from its own power base, but they have no formal power within the institution. Is that at all problematic moving forward?

Jenkins: We are a public institution. This is not a private institution. This has to be done through the board and through the institution. I don't think this could be readily imposed externally.

T-P: When you said you'd be an active interim president, did you mean these questions of organization and structure?

Jenkins: Yeah. I may not be the implementer. Running a university is like turning a battleship. We are not nimble by nature. That's not judgmental about LSU; that's a statement about universities, the nature of the academy. But to air these questions and to discuss and to strategize would be very appropriate. I'd like to see that happen. That's healthy.

T-P: Do you want to see LSU maintain control of its medical enterprises, including the hospitals?

Jenkins: You have to have collaboration and control with the hospitals. ... Sometimes that (university ownership) model works very well, Sometimes you have independent hospitals. ... You've got to have a close relationship, at worst, but very often an even closer relationship between your medical school and hospitals. That's what we had at Big Charity.

T-P: The governor hasn't said this explicitly, but his actions and philosophy suggest that he prefers to move in a fundamentally different direction (on health-care delivery).

Jenkins: That's national. That's privatization. I keep raising the question; Who is going to look after the indigent in this state? ... There has to be some safety net for it to work. A great nation like the United States cannot let its poor and indigent die in the streets. So there has to be a public hospital component.

T-P: Is your impression that the LSU board, or a working majority, feels the same way or are they more on the governor's track?

Jenkins: I don't want to give the impression that the governor and I are at odds on this. But however this is done, the public medical schools have to have access to hospitals and there has to be a modicum of control and a firm relationship.

T-P: The university having some kind of control over the hospitals, you mean?

Jenkins: Yes. Again, I'm not saying we're out there demanding that the current model stay as it is. But that has to be carefully thought through. No one really knows what's best. It's all an experiment.